That prototype!
Class produces That Girl!, an award-winning magazine blueprint
Betty Cortina, JM 1992, former editorial director of Latina magazine, gunned her golf cart across a 23-acre Alachua farm to check on the slumber-party photo shoot. She drove up to see journalism students Taryn Fiol and Ashley Cain blowing bubbles over a group of preteen girls in brightly patterned pajamas.
The excited volunteer models squealed and laughed while photojournalism senior Zachary Bennett snapped away.
Cortina’s walkie-talkie crackled to life with the voice of art director Holly Gibbs, JM 2008, saying the fashion shoot ran out of masking tape. Satisfied that Fiol and Cain had the pajama party under control, Cortina grabbed tape and hopped back into the cart.
The students set up the photo shoot as part of producing a magazine prototype for Cortina’s Magazine Management class in the spring. In the summer, That Girl! won the 2008 AEJMC Student Magazine Contest for the Team Start-Up Magazine Project.
Cortina, who has worked for O, The Oprah Magazine and People en Español, lived on the farm during the spring semester, when she served as the College’s Hearst Visiting Professional.
“At the photo shoot,” said journalism senior and That Girl! Editor-in-Chief Nicole Orr, “she just sat back and drove around and made sure nothing too crazy was going on, but she knew we were capable of doing it.”
In previous semesters, Magazine Management involved four or five student teams that each produced a 32-page magazine prototype, Associate Prof. Ted Spiker said.
Cortina’s group took the assignment in a different direction. The class was discussing current magazine trends when they hit upon what they felt could be the next big thing: tweens, recalled Erin Everhart, journalism senior and That Girl! managing editor.
The business development team researched the market for the 7- to 12-year-old demographic. Rather than breaking into competing groups, the students decided to work together to create one all-inclusive prototype to cater to the “Hannah Montana” generation. The Disney Channel show, featuring country singer Billy Ray Cyrus’ 16-year-old daughter, Miley Cyrus, is a hit among tweens.
“This is a big audience that’s spending billions of dollars a year,” Gibbs said.
The class realized the magazine needed to be multi-platform. Today’s tweens are on the verge of being “screenagers,” or kids who spend most of their time on three types of screens.
TV, cell phone and computer screens absorb so much of the screenagers’ time that the class made sure to integrate each into the magazine’s business plan, Gibbs said. The prototype’s launch would include a TV network, a phone number that girls could text for survey results or the joke of the week, and a Web site with interactive projects and behind-the-scenes video and pictures from the magazine’s photo shoot.
“We wanted to have an original photo shoot because having stock images doesn’t make it pop,” Everhart said.
The team borrowed more than 388 pieces from Gap Kids, Limited Too and Vera Bradley from The Oaks Mall in Gainesville and managed to return them all, Everhart said.
Cortina helped the team manage the clothes with some tricks of the trade, like taping the bottoms of shoes to keep them clean or carrying around Tide to Go pens to erase any spills on clothing.
“We had specific roles like a stylist and a production manager. I was one of the photographers,” journalism sophomore Heather Strange said. “Betty invited us to the farm she’s living at while she’s here. At first I thought it was funny for a New York magazine editor to live with horses and poop, but it was beautiful.”
Cortina’s farm hosts, Jason and Denise Rosenberg, have two daughters, Lindsay, 7, and Sarah, 5, who invited about 12 of their friends to model for the shoot.
“We were there for eight hours that day, and everyone was scattered over all parts of the farm,” Strange said. “There was something going on every second of that day, as if we were real professionals.”
Journalism senior David Low, the lone male on the staff of That Girl!, ran the food table at the shoot. Although working on a preteen girls’ magazine was not his first choice, he said learning the different aspects of magazine production proved a good experience.
“A job like catering is so important because there are people there at 7:30 a.m. who didn’t leave until 5 p.m.,” Cortina said. “Catering matters when you have a little girl having a meltdown because she’s hungry.”
Dean John Wright and Master Lecturer Mike Foley, JM 1970, MAMC 2004, stopped by the farm to see the class in action.
“I was very impressed,” Foley said. “I thought that they did a great job. They arranged for clothes for the kids, kept the kids in line, kept kids from drowning in the pool.”
Alta Systems printed 75 copies of That Girl! magazine for just under $1,000. Wright approved the funding after hearing what an extraordinary product the students produced, Cortina said.
“It would be a shame to have all this hard work printed on copier paper,” Cortina said. “And at the end of the day, I’d like to think they got their money’s worth.”
Although there are no definite plans, the editorial team said they want to try to continue the magazine on a large scale. Everhart, Orr and Gibbs, along with Fiol and Shauna Canty, JM 2008, made a PowerPoint presentation in front of faculty members including Wright, Foley, Spiker, and Department of Journalism Chair William McKeen, as well as Linda Marks, publisher of Ocala Magazine, Steve Shepherd, from Alta Printing, and Joe Kays, editor of UF’s Explore magazine, to make a pitch about the magazine, marketing, advertising and design.
“This was during finals week. They had already gotten grades, but they said, ‘No, we want to do it, we want to know how to
do it,’ ” Cortina said. “This above and beyond [the] desire to really learn was the theme of whole class and whole semester to the very end.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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